This invention relates to non-volatile mass storage devices and more particularly to storage of and access to information on mass storage devices.
Non-volatile mass storage devices such as Universal Serial Bus (USB) mass storage devices are widely used in the information technology field for convenient storage of information. Known applications of such non-volatile mass storage devices include flash discs, which can be used to store software programs that when invoked run on a host data processing system. For example, many security and data synchronization software applications are invoked in this manner. USB dongles (i.e. hardware keys) are often used to interact with some host program running on a host data processing machine.
To sign up for a service associated with a hardware or software product or to register a tool associated with a hardware product, a user typically is required to manually enter via a Website either a product serial number or activation code that the user reads from some kind of labelling providing on the hardware device itself. It is also known to use USB dongles to authenticate a piece of software and to selectively activate some aspect of that software via some form of negotiation with the host data processing device into which the USB dongle is installed. One example of such known systems is a micro controller unit board and the associated license to the on-line/off-line tools for it.
In the case of registration of product serial numbers, in known systems each serial number has to be tracked together with the product and aligned with the manufacturing/supply channel. In the case of software authentication provided by means of a USB dongle, software is required to be running on the host data processing machine in order to perform the negotiation for the authentication.
These previously known mechanisms for registration of hardware, authentication of software or indeed registration for a service or tool associated with a hardware, software or firmware product are inflexible and impractical in terms of the requirement to provide corresponding software on the host data processing device and the requirement to track serial numbers through the manufacturing chain until the point when a user activates the particular serial number. These aspects give rise to difficulties in manufacturing logistics for providing up to date software and drivers and for tracking the serial numbers.